


Saving Hannah Foster

by okemmelie



Series: A Strange House [2]
Category: Black Friday - Team StarKid, The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: Gen, Horror, Mystery, idk man i just work here, read the notes for warnings, this time it's more horror than mystery i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26747146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okemmelie/pseuds/okemmelie
Summary: Elias stops updating his blog. Hannah is still missing. Ethan knows he has to do something.
Series: A Strange House [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947250
Comments: 46
Kudos: 19





	1. Panic

**Author's Note:**

> hi! before i talk about anything else, i'd just like to point you in the direction of the major character death warning. this is a horror and every single character is a teenager (and a very young one in hannah's case, tho idk if she's even thirteen yet). there will be absolutely no graphic violence or descriptions of how anyone dies, but people do die in between two chapters. i'll be putting an additional warning when we get to that point, but please take care of yourself
> 
> this is a follow up to "the disappearance of alice fink". it's about the aftermath of elias' final blog post and about ethan's attempt to figure out how to get his friends back. ethan is not a blogger, especially not without elias to proof read for him, so this will be a traditional fic instead. ethan is also much less invested with the mystery of the house and much more interested in saving his friends, so i apologize in advance if this doesn't have all the answers

_ Perhaps I’ve reached a conclusion. Not about the house, not about the disappearances, but about me. I’m not bold and I’m not brave. I’m not stupid either. But I’m curious. I need to figure out what’s going on. And I’m determined to put an end to it, whatever it is. So I’m going to go in there. I’ll update you guys on the other end. _

__

_ Wish me luck. _

_ – Elias _

It’s been exactly an hour since Elias posted his blog post and Ethan’s been staring at his screen the entire time. He’s refreshed the page at least a dozen times and he has no intention of stopping, because what if an update comes? What if Elias finally, finally,  _ finally  _ confirms that his worst fears haven’t come true?

Two more hours pass and still, there’s no update. Ethan can’t afford to spiral. He’s already lost Hannah to whatever’s going on in Hatchetfield, to whatever’s going on in that fucking house. He can’t lose Elias too. Even if they don’t know each other that well, even if they aren’t really friends, he can’t lose him.

Maybe Elias just needs a little time? That’s what Ethan tells himself as he forces himself to go to sleep. He just needs a little time to come up with his big words and his well thought-through theories and when Ethan wakes up in the morning, there’ll be an update waiting for him.

The first thing Ethan does when he wakes up Saturday morning is open his computer and check out the blog. Still nothing. Fuck.

When Sunday rolls around and there’s been no word from Elias, not even a single reply to his many text messages or even a ‘ _ Read’  _ underneath his messages to signal that his blonde nerd friend is alive and well, Ethan decides that enough is enough. If Elias won’t answer his messages or update his blog, Ethan has to take matters into his own hands.

He gets into his car and starts driving towards Elias’ house. He’s terrified of showing up and finding out his parents haven’t seen him or heard from him either, but he supposes rather hear it from them than get to school on Monday and hear their principal announce another kid missing.

Elias’ house is so unlike any other house Ethan frequents. It’s not in a trailer park, first of all. Secondly, it’s perfect. Almost too perfect. A white picket fence and a way too green lawn considering the season. He supposes it could look welcoming, but Ethan feels anything but welcome as he makes his way to the door.

He takes a deep breath. Then he knocks.


	2. Curiosity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we can have a little change of perspective. as a treat!

He knocks, but no one answers. Of course no one answers; things are never that easy and he’s not sure he would have liked what would have happened in the alternative reality where someone let him in. But he cannot give up, cannot let go. He _needs_ to know. So he raises his hand and knocks once more.

It’s not him who opens the door, he’s certain it's not. But it does swing open. Quietly. Slowly. He doesn’t like it, but he steps inside anyway.

The floor creaks under his feet, growls almost. It’s enough to make the hairs on his neck stand up, but then he remembers that floorboards can’t growl; it’s just a sound that floors make and it’s just the cold that’s making him shiver.

There’s nothing he wants more than to call out, say hello, ask who’s in here – _maybe there’s no one in here at all_ – but he can’t. But he parts his lips and the words escape him; the silence remains unbroken. He pushes on.

An open door on the right hand side of the small hallway draws his eyes. It’s a kitchen, and a quite cozy one; family pictures hang up on the wall and small knick knacks fills the counter, the shelves, the dinner table (which seems to already be set for an upcoming meal). The oven is on, but he can’t quite place the smell. Besides, no one’s in the kitchen and it’s not really his business. He decides to keep going.

Further down, the hallway opens up to a living room. He misses stepping on a brightly colored plastic truck by an inch or so. Clearly there’s children in the house. Peculiar.

The living room is nothing special. A staircase leads up to the second floor and a glassdoor outlooks a lived-in garden and beyond that, the water. Going up the stairs doesn’t seem appropriate, so he turns his attention to the other side of the room.

Hm. Just a couch, some more children’s toys and a small television. Not as exciting as he thought it’d be.

He turns around again, ready to head back out, when he spots it. A painting of a woman holding a floor mop. He almost recognizes her. Actually, he does recognize her, he’s sure of that. He just can’t place a finger on _where_ he recognizes her from. He meets her gaze, cold grey eyes staring right through him. There’s something warm about them, though. At least he feels much warmer looking into them.

Someone knocks. It’s loud and it interrupts his thoughts, but his parents and older sister are off to church so he puts on his best smile and goes to open it, reluctantly of course. “What do you want?”

The guy on the other side of the door opens his mouth and spends a few seconds just looking at him, almost as if he’s seen a ghost. “Fuck, I’m so happy you’re alive.”

Elias is pulled in for a hug. He knows this guy, of course he does. He’s hugging him, so he must know him. _What’s his name again?_ “Of course I’m alive. Why wouldn’t I be?”

He pulls back. Not Elias, but the other guy. Before, he looked confused and relieved. Now he looks angry. “Why sh– you didn’t update your blog. You didn’t answer my texts. I thought you’d gone missing.”

 _Ethan!_ His name is Ethan. Of course. “Well, I didn’t. Obviously. I’ve just had more important things to think about. You know, like the house!”

“Well, did you find anything interesting, anything useful, any… any of the others?”

Elias shakes his head. It doesn’t seem like the kind of situation where he should be honest and admit that he completely forgot about the missing kids, so he opts for a white lie instead. “Oh wait, actually! There was this painting of–” Something clicks in his head. The woman in the painting. He’s seen her before while researching the house. The very first owner of it, as far as he recalls. “I have to go.”

Slamming the door in Ethan’s face certainly isn’t the nicest thing he’s ever done, but he’s busy. This is way more important than whatever Ethan’s reason for showing up at his house might be.


	3. Worry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay now we're back in ethan land.  
> also this is being posted on the 15th of october 2020 which is my dad and little brother's birthday. very wack of my brother to turn 18 tbh. if your birthday is october 15 and you're not my brother or father, this chapter is dedicated to you!

Something is wrong with the Bouchard house. Ethan knows that for sure. There’s no way Elias would have changed that much, no way he’d have turned him away like that if it wasn’t for the fact that something happened to him. Ethan isn’t as sure about that part, but he likes to believe it’s true.

As much as he wants to charge head-first into the old house, he can’t seem to let go of the feeling of it being a bad idea. Maybe even a horrible one.

Part of him wants to talk to Lex about It, but it’s her little sister who’s missing and he knows how much she loves her. She has enough to think about without being bombarded with Ethan’s theory that the rumored-to-be-evil house is not only rumored-to-be-evil but it’s also most-likely-actually-evil.

Or maybe he’s going crazy. That, too, is a possibility.

The change in Elias happened  _ after  _ he’d gone into the house. The kids disappeared after they went into the house. Elias hasn’t disappeared yet. Ethan… doesn’t really know how to piece everything together, if he’s being honest. He’s sure it can be done, but not by him.

So, he settles for doing the next best thing, for something he  _ can  _ do. He goes to the house across the street (of the Bouchard house, not his own house; he seriously doubts that he’d make any breaks in the case by going to Charles Charles, the science teacher). It’s a nicer area of town than he’s used to and the idea of going up and knocking on a door is a bit intimidating but luckily, Danny’s already outside. He’s standing a bit down the street, smoking, and Ethan takes initiative to light a cigarette of his own.

“Danny,” he greets. “What’s up?”

Danny raises an eyebrow at him. “What do you want?”

He could pull the ‘what, can’t I just be here for friendly reasons; do I have to  _ want  _ something?’-card but Danny and Ethan are not friendly with each other and besides, he does want something. There’s no use in lying, because he’s worried. For his friend, for Hannah. “My friend, Elias, he went into the house, right?” He nods towards the Bouchard house across the street as he asks.

“He did.” He takes a drag of his cigarette. “But he came out again. Isn’t that a relief?”

“I guess,” Ethan sighs. “Has he been back since the first time?”

This time, Danny nods. “Plenty of times. Well, he’s been back _ here,  _ not back in the house. Not from what I’ve noticed, at least. He’s just been looking at it. But a lot. He’s been looking at it a lot.”

Strange. Not unexpected, but still strange. “When was the last time you saw him?”

Danny points to something (someone?) behind Ethan.


	4. Obsession

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is for all my homies who listen to the magnus archives. i didn't realize i scheduled this to release on thursdays and now i'm :'))

Elias hits the library. There’s not much else for him to do seeing as he’s already spent about an hour today just looking at the damn house and nothing happened. Well, nothing exciting anyway. He thought for sure he saw movement from within, figures waving at him to come join them, but then a car would pass by and they’d be gone. He’d gone near the house many, many times since his first (and only) trip inside and it was always like this.

It didn’t matter much what he’d seen or what he hadn’t. Right now, he is on a mission. He flips through countless old newspaper articles and finds… close to nothing. Nothing new, anyway. Just the same old story of four kids going missing that one summer. Two girls, three boys, all between the ages eleven and eighteen.

Come to think of it, eighteen can barely be considered “a child”. Not in Elias’ opinion anyway. He’s eighteen and he certainly doesn’t think of himself as “a child”.

Wait. How could four kids have gone missing and never returned if there’s three boys and two girls? That doesn’t add up. And he needs it to add up. It can’t not add up.

So he throws himself over more digging and after a few hours, he finds his answer. Five kids went missing that summer: the Bouchard children and the daughter of someone who lived very close-by. The other kid turned up at the door to her house again after about 26 hours, but the town has started a search already just to be safe. Four kids had just gone missing, after all.

He can’t find any more information about the girl which is frustrating. All he wants to do is figure out what’s happening with these disappearances, with this house, and it seems that with every single step towards an answer, there’s an obstacle course he has to run to get there.

Seeing as there’s not a lot more for him to do here, he packs up and gets ready to leave. He makes his way towards the exit and almost walks out before remembering he’s forgotten his water bottle by the table. On his way back, he notices a man with a ponytail looking in the same area that he’d found the newspaper with the fifth kid.

Strange.

Something about the Bouchard house never fails to draw him in. It hasn’t always been like this, but ever since he went in there and saw it for himself, he’s been fascinated.

He wants to go back in. Sometimes it feels like he  _ needs  _ to go in. And that’s a strange feeling, but not necessarily one he hates. There’s just one thing stopping him. Not only is the house fascinating to him, but it’s also scary. It leaves him with a weird feeling in his chest and a bad feeling in his stomach. He’s dancing on the line between fear and fascination, and he has no idea how to stop.

On his way home from the library, he decides to stop by the house. Can it really be called a decision if it feels like the only right thing to do?

There are people on the street, but he doesn’t mind them. Doesn’t really see them, if he's being honest. All he sees is the house.

Well, that’s not exactly true. He hears voices, distant at first but when it becomes clear to him that the voices belong to Danny and Ethan, he turns his head. Danny is pointing at him and Ethan turns to look.

That can’t be good.

Not ready to face another conversation with Ethan or to be yelled at in front of Danny, Elias does the only logical thing, the only thing that seems right to do. He turns and bolts to the house.


	5. Hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i revealed to julie that elias looks like isak from skam and she told me that she kind of already imagined him like that, so if you too got isak from skam vibes you were correct!
> 
> warnings  
> – very brief mention of blood  
> – there's a fight, but it's only described very briefly and no one gets hurt beyond falling to the floor

Elias sets off running, so Ethan does the only thing he can think of. He pushes past Danny and starts running after him.

It’s strange. Elias doesn’t look like someone who’d be fast (he’s more a nerd than an athlete as far as Ethan knows) and Ethan  _ should  _ be able to catch up with him, but he can’t. Not even when he pushes himself to his very limits.

So Elias makes it to the house before him. That’s fine. And Elias slams the door in his face. That’s fine too. Except it doesn’t open when Ethan reaches it. Not knowing what to do but really wanting to catch Elias before he does something stupid, Ethan picks up a rock from the lawn and uses it to smash a window.

The jump through the window is not a comfortable one. Apparently, glass is sharp and not friendly to people just jumping without taking the precautions they probably should have. It bleeds a little, but not so much that he can’t keep going. He can hear Elias moving from somewhere in the house and he has a bad feeling about this, so he  _ has  _ to catch up.

The room he lands in seems to be the kitchen, though there are no appliances and no furniture. There’s counters and cupboards, though. Old ones. Dust and glass covers the floor and Ethan walks through it out into an empty hallway.

It leads into an open room with a view over the water and some stairs leading up. He doesn’t notice much else before he spots Elias. He’s standing still in the middle of the room, facing a painting of an empty room. On one side of him stands Alice, her face devoid of feeling. On the other stands the other missing guy. What was his name again? He knows Elias called him the hot chocolate boy, but he’s pretty sure that’s not something a person can be named.

“Elias?” Ethan says, taking a step towards his once-friend. He doesn’t think he can call them friends anymore, but maybe it’s just the house’s influence making Elias act all weird.

Ethan takes a step towards him when he doesn’t respond and places a hand on his shoulder. “Elias, you’re scaring me. Please, let's just get out of here."

A fist flies towards his face. It’s Alice’s and he luckily manages to duck just out of range. Before long, the other guy (seriously, what is his name?) kicks at him, but Ethan grabs his foot and pulls up until the guy loses his balance.

All three of them are weaker than him, but keeping them all at a distance at all times proves difficult. It’s not that he wants to fight them, but something feels off. Their faces are blank and they’re not responding to him or even the hits he manages to land in a desperate attempt to fend them off.

It’s a hard fight, but it’s one he seems to be winning.

That is, of course, until he hears a familiar yet unfamiliar voice coming from behind him. “Hi Ethan.” Elias kicks his knee and Ethan lands on the floor as his eyes are drawn to the staircase and there she is. Hannah. “Friends. It’s alright,” she says and just like that, the other missing kids stop attacking him.

“What are you doing here?” He asks, still not getting up from the floor. “Are you alright?”

Hannah laughs. It doesn’t sound like her laugh, not quite anyway. There’s something familiar about it, but something chilling as well. It makes him feel uneasy, but he’s too relieved to see her again, alive, to act on it. “I’m not quite Hannah. But she’s still in here. She misses you.”

Ethan narrows his eyes and tilts his head slightly to the side. That doesn’t quite make sense. “But, how? What?”

She steps closer and places her hand on top of his head, an unfamiliar smile resting on her lips. “Don’t worry about it. There’s still time. You can still save her.”

“How?” He asks. Maybe if he saves Hannah, he can save the other kids as well. But right now, and always, Hannah is his number one priority.

She looks around the room. To Alice, to Elias, to the other boy. To the empty painting. Then back at Ethan. Were her eyes always this grey? They must have been. There’s something warm about them and he knows Hannah had warm eyes, so it must fit. It has to. “Find a replacement. Make it quick.”


	6. Despair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for  
> – no violence, but heavily implied murder  
> – blood  
> – dead bodies

Ethan can’t remember anything about what just happened, but he manages to come to himself so that’s nice. He thinks. It’s at least something. But then he looks down and there’s blood on his hands. He’s not sure who it belongs to.

He feels cold.

When he looks up, things don’t get much better. It also doesn’t get less bloody. Bodies. Four of them. Three boys, one girl. He can make out Elias, Alice and that other kid who went missing easily. Is the fourth one Danny? He isn’t sure.

There’s a horrible feeling in his chest. His stomach too. He feels like he’s about to throw up, but he doesn’t. It’s not that he doesn’t want to, but something stops him and he isn’t sure what it is.

Suddenly, he feels something on his shoulder. A hand, much warmer than anything else in the room. Much warmer than his own body. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt as cold as this. He also doesn’t think anyone’s ever felt this warm. He looks up, and sure enough there she is. Hannah.

But he’s getting increasingly sure it isn’t Hannah. Her eyes are wrong. They’re not gray, not usually. He feels certain about that now. But this Hannah has gray eyes that somehow manage to be the warmest thing in the room.

“It’s almost over,” she tells him in a voice that’s not quite her own. It’s calmer, more secure itself and warm. Warmer than normal, warmer than natural,  _ warmer. _

He’s not sure why he does it, but he gets up. He helps pick up the bloody pieces of bodies on the ground in front of him and starts throwing them into the painting. It makes sense to him in the moment; it’s the most natural thing to do, the  _ only  _ natural thing to do. And once he’s done, he reaches for the mop that’s now leaning against the wall next to the painting.

Once he finishes mopping the floor, making sure there’s no blood left, he hands the mop to Hannah.

“Thank you Ethan,” she says with a warm smile.

The next moment, the mop is gone. The warmth in Hannah’s eyes is gone, the smile on her lips is gone, the feeling of everything being right and natural disappears from Ethan. The cold doesn’t.

Hannah looks scared. Scared of something on the wall, then scared of him. Ethan turns his attention to the painting. It’s no longer empty. Instead, it features a woman with strangely warm gray eyes; she’s holding a mop and that same smile he saw on Hannah moments ago rests on her lips. He swears she’s looking straight at him.

When he looks back, Hannah’s gone. Hannah’s gone and Ethan falls to his knees. There’s blood under his fingernails and he can’t shake that cold feeling. He has no idea what just happened. No idea what he just did. No idea what he’s supposed to do next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, thank you so much for reading! this series is one of my favorite things i've ever written and while i'm very sad to see it go, i'm also very happy to have written it. i am not immune to writing more hathetfield teens facing strange horrors in the future though, so who knows! i know i've already said thank you for reading, but really. thank you so much! my tumblr is @krayonders – if you wanna see me write something else, my requests are always open, and if you just wanna chat, so's my ask box and my dms! happy halloween!!!


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